Category Archives: FEMA

The Texas activist group Don’t Comply was making waves again this week after they were ejected from a bioterrorism drill for filming. Members of Don’t Comply signed up to be “crisis actors” in a mock government drill, which is said to train police and emergency crews for an actual attack.

Don’t Comply members Matthew Short, Murdoch Pizgatti, Brett Sanders and others were accepted to take part in the drill, and they decided to bring their cameras and film the event so they could give the public a better idea of how these drills work and ultimately, how their tax dollars are spent. The group had responded to a public call for volunteers that was broadcast through NBC News. The article asked for 200 volunteers play the role of a “patient” in a mock bioterrorism attack.

According to Addison fire chief John O’Neil, there were multiple government agencies involved in the operation, including the local fire department, health department, and police department.

“The fire department does frequent training so that we can be prepared for any emergency. By Partnering with these other agencies, we are able to participate in exercises we could not possibly manage alone,” O’Neil told NBC.

Matthew Short told The Free Thought Project that Don’t Comply wanted to get to the bottom of what was really going on with these training drills and these crisis actors, to experience for themselves and to show the world what was happening.

“We were interested in what they were training for. There was a public call for up to two hundred crisis actors. The Dontcomply crew thought it would be a great idea to get cameras inside to look past conspiracy theories, and find out what was actually going on,” Short said.

“My nickname online is showme. I like to see things to believe them,” he added.

As expected, as soon as they entered the drill, their presence and the presence of their cameras was unwelcome and they were asked to stop filming by a number of organizers and volunteers.

Brett Sanders described the encounter in a recent article, saying that,

One Dallas County volunteer who was sporting an official lanyard of some kind requested that I not film her, which I politely refused. Not only was she working in an official government capacity, she was in a public space with no expectation to privacy. That didn’t stop her from charging at me and my camera, attempting to knock the camera out of my hands. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe I was assaulted by this government volunteer for refusing to stop recording.

Sanders went on to describe how his crew was kicked out, and that the local mainstream news affiliate was kicked out as well.

Don’t Comply activists are calling these actions taken by police and government agents an attack on the freedom of the press and the first amendment.

“As an independent journalist, I took great interest in this event and believed that the public has a right to know how their own government is allocating resources and should be aware of how the drill was being conducted,” Sanders said.

A video of the activists being kicked out of the drill can be viewed below:

As we reported last month, Don’t Comply regularly feeds the homeless in their area despite a local law that prohibits them from doing so.

Interestingly enough, Don’t Comply also made headlines earlier this month for an entirely different type of protest. In addition to being advocates for the homeless, Don’t Comply is also heavily involved in gun rights and open carry activism.

Earlier this month, they staged a mock mass shooting at “gun free zones” to demonstrate how long it took police to arrive. Their protest was controversial, but actually changed the minds of many who rely on police as their only source of protection.

John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can purchase his books, or get your own book published at his website www.JohnVibes.com.

Ever since armed militiamen took over a federal building in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the one question that has been on everyone’s mind is “how are the Feds going to respond to this?” Regardless of whether or not you support these people, you have to admit that the government’s response hasn’t been typical.

At least for now, there isn’t an army of soldiers, or swat teams, or tanks, bearing down on the militia’s position. As far as we know the FBI is en route, and that’s pretty much it. From the accounts that have been coming out of the area, it doesn’t look like a Waco situation. It doesn’t look like a Bundy Ranch situation either.

Granted, this could still get really ugly at any time, but based on what government officials have said, it doesn’t sound like they want that. While its hard to say what they are thinking behind the scenes, publicly they are calling for a peaceful resolution to the situation. Even the White House chimed in, referring to the standoff as a “local law enforcement matter” and refusing to label the militiamen “terrorists,” before calling for a peaceful resolution.

I don’t know if they really mean that, but it means something. Just as the militiamen have claimed that they won’t shoot unless fired upon first, the government may be trying to play the same card. Perhaps they are trying to makes themselves look peaceful and rational, before sending in a provocateur to escalate the situation in their favor, but who knows? It’s just as likely that they genuinely don’t want a civil war on their hands. If they did, they would have burned the Bundy Ranch to the ground back in 2014.

Honestly, I think they learned their lesson after Waco and Ruby Ridge. As much as our authoritarian government would love to shoot and burn every American that challenges them, they know it only makes things worse. In the long run, those incidents only served to catalyze the growing militia movement at the time, and they still inspire fear in our government to this day. Granted, the government wants you to be afraid, but it has to be the right kind of fear. They want you hiding under your bed. The last thing they want, is for everyone to grab a rifle and start organizing with like-minded people.

And that’s precisely why they backed down from the Bundy Ranch. They knew that in the public’s eyes, they did not have the moral high ground. They knew that if they fired upon those ranchers and militiamen, it would only foment more resistance around the country.

That doesn’t mean they don’t want some kind of revolution or civil war in the near future. If they ever want to really lock this country down and suppress all resistance in the population, that would be the perfect excuse. However, it’s hard to say if they want that war to occur right now. They need to be sure that all of their ducks are in a row before they spark that kind of conflict, and I don’t think they are.

Which brings us back to the standoff in Oregon. In the long run, what is our government going to do about this? Are they going to sit back and try to wait out the militia? Are they going to negotiate with them? Will they use a provocateur to inspire violence in the militiamen, or will they just steam roll through them with APC’s and soldiers?

While it’s likely that the government doesn’t want a revolution (at the moment), they have also reached a moment of truth. They’ve come face to face with a crippling reality that every heavy-handed regime reaches at some point.

During the 90’s they learned that violent suppression only breeds more resistance. Now they’re beginning to learn what happens when they don’t respond with immediate violence. If they let these people get away with this, even for a little while, what message are they sending to the American population? That if you show up with guns to a government building, the government will just roll over and play ball? That too, also breeds more resistance. The population realizes that the government is too chicken to fight them, and they’ll start to take back their country.

So there’s really only two courses of action that the government can take, if they want to maintain their long-term existence. They can find a peaceful resolution that leaves them looking authoritative. Or, they can find a way to oust these men by force in a way that makes them look like the good guys (i.e. with a false flag of some kind). If the militiamen don’t leave on their own accord within the coming days or weeks, we’ll soon see what the government is really capable of, and their long-term intentions will be crystal clear.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .

Back in 2014, civil liberties and privacy advocates were up in arms when the government tried to quietly push through the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, a law which would allow federal agencies – including the NSA – to share cybersecurity, and really any information with private corporations “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” The most vocal complaint involved CISA’s information-sharing channel, which was ostensibly created for responding quickly to hacks and breaches, and which provided a loophole in privacy laws that enabled intelligence and law enforcement surveillance without a warrant.

Ironically, in its earlier version, CISA had drawn the opposition of tech firms including Apple, Twitter, Reddit, as well as the Business Software Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and many others including countless politicians and, most amusingly, the White House itself.

In April, a coalition of 55 civil liberties groups and security experts signed onto an open letter opposing it. In July, the Department of Homeland Security itself warned that the bill could overwhelm the agency with data of “dubious value” at the same time as it “sweep[s] away privacy protections.” Most notably, the biggest aggregator of online private content, Facebook, vehemently opposed the legislation however a month ago it was “surprisingly” revealed that Zuckerberg had been quietly on the side of the NSA all along as we reported in “Facebook Caught Secretly Lobbying For Privacy-Destroying “Cyber-Security” Bill.”

Following the blitz response, the push to pass CISA was tabled following a White House threat to veto similar legislation. Then, quietly, CISA reemerged after the same White House mysteriously flip-flopped, expressed its support for precisely the same bill in August.

And then the masks fell off, when it became obvious that not only are corporations eager to pass CISA despite their previous outcry, but that they have both the White House and Congress in their pocket.

As Wired reminds us, when the Senate passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act by a vote of 74 to 21 in October, privacy advocates were again “aghast” that the key portions of the law were left intact which they said make it more amenable to surveillance than actual security, claiming that Congress has quietly stripped out “even more of its remaining privacy protections.”

“They took a bad bill, and they made it worse,” says Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute.

But while Congress was preparing a second assault on privacy, it needed a Trojan Horse with which to enact the proposed legislation into law without the public having the ability to reject it.

It found just that by attaching it to the Omnibus $1.1 trillion Spending Bill, which passed the House early this morning, passed the Senate moments ago and will be signed into law by the president in the coming hours.

In a late-night session of Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a new version of the “omnibus” bill, a massive piece of legislation that deals with much of the federal government’s funding. It now includes a version of CISA as well. Lumping CISA in with the omnibus bill further reduces any chance for debate over its surveillance-friendly provisions, or a White House veto. And the latest version actually chips away even further at the remaining personal information protections that privacy advocates had fought for in the version of the bill that passed the Senate.

It gets: it appears that while CISA was on hiatus, US lawmakers – working under the direction of corporations adnt the NSA – were seeking to weaponize the revised legislation, and as Wired says, the latest version of the bill appended to the omnibus legislation seems to exacerbate the problem of personal information protections.

It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness.

Some, like Senator Ron Wyden, spoke out out against the changes to the bill in a press statement, writing they’d worsened a bill he already opposed as a surveillance bill in the guise of cybersecurity protections.

Senator Richard Burr, who had introduced the earlier version of bill, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Americans deserve policies that protect both their security and their liberty,” he wrote. “This bill fails on both counts.”

Why was the CISA included in the omnibus package, which just passed both the House and the Senate? Because any “nay” votes – or an Obama – would also threaten the entire budget of the federal government. In other words, it was a question of either Americans keeping their privacy or halting the funding of the US government, in effect bankrupting the nation.

And best of all, the rushed bill means there will be no debate.

The bottom line as OTI’s Robyn Green said, “They’ve got this bill that’s kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they’ve seen an opportunity to push it through without debate. And they’re taking that opportunity.”

The punchline: “They’re kind of pulling a Patriot Act.”

And when Obama signs the $1.1 trillion Spending Bill in a few hours, as he will, it will be official: the second Patriot Act will be the law, and with it what little online privacy US citizens may enjoy, will be gone.

The Special Operations Command for the U.S. Army may be preparing to blend in during its mock engagement of hostile populations in the U.S. Southwest this summer, but first it is going on the offense to counter the claims of “conspiracy theorists” about the true nature of the controversial Jade Helm 15 exercises.

U.S. Army Special Operations Command says that, contrary to reports circulating on conspiracy websites, it has no plans to invade Texas.

Some fringe websites have paraded a PowerPoint presentation, reportedly from USASOC, as evidence of Jade Helm 15, a series of military exercises across California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Texas. They say it will train the U.S. military to suppress American citizens rebelling in a coming military coup or civil war.

“It’s a training exercise. Just a regular training exercise,” Lastoria said of Jade Helm, which USASOC documentation references as a training exercise in at least one previous year as well.

[…]

The article singled out reports from Infowars and All News PipeLine, among others stressing concern about the preparations for martial law:

Conspiracy websites painted language regarding civilian impact as revealing of the true nature of the mission: to prepare for abducting dissidents from their homes.

Many of the conspiracy sites have focused in on the selection of Texas as a “hostile” territory. To them, a high degree of libertarian support, pro-gun leanings and patriotism make Texas a target. The slides also mark Utah and a pocket in Southern California as “hostile,” while New Mexico is “uncertain (leaning hostile)” and Arizona is “uncertain (leaning friendly).”

The presentation slides say the area was chosen for its large undeveloped tracts of land and low population density. Texas in particular was chosen as the hub of the operation because it has been traditionally military-friendly, easing the impact or alarm the forces’ presence might impose on localities, according to the slides.

Though disputing any ill intent, the Army Times admits that the Jade Helm drill is real, and that soldiers have trained for the approach – “mastering the human domain” – before.

“the human domain is the totality of the physical, cultural and social environments that influence human behavior to the extent that success of any military operation or campaign depends on the application of unique capabilities that are designed to fight and win population-centric conflicts. It is a critical and complementary concept to the recognized domains of land, air, maritime, space and cyberspace.”

In an apparent predecessor to the drill, officers wrote on the need to project military operations and occupation efforts into the “human domain,” in order to engage the social, political and economic spheres seen as critical for mission success.

It is a technological continuation of the double-edged philosophy of the Pentagon and White House to “win over hearts and minds” over the course of the flawed Vietnam War, a term known in more technical terms as pacification of the population.

It’s focus on mapping the “Human Terrain” – using the expertise and techniques of anthropology – lends credence to the idea that the military are “rehearsing” scenarios concerning how to deal with independent-minded and anti-establishment people living inside Texas and Utah, the “hostile” states identified in the Jade Helm drill. On the human domain:

“What we know and project about the future operating environment tells us that the significance of the ‘human domain’ in future conflict is growing, not diminished,” the service leaders wrote.

One controversial tool to aid in the collection, processing and analysis of information in regards to the human domain has been the US Human Terrain System (HTS) in which social scientists, primarily anthropologists, have been utilised to conduct research and provide analysis to military commanders in support of the military’s operations […] At the height of the programme there were 30 HTS teams in Afghanistan and despite the challenges of the programme, it was widely viewed as providing value […] .

Currently tools such as PMESII (Political, Military, Economic, Societal, Infrastructure, Information)[xxxiv] through to the excel spreadsheet in the British issued human terrain packs can provide valuable tools to begin the collection and processing of human domain information

In short, it utilizes the psyop to persuade the population with co-opted leaders and copious amounts of propaganda and more subtle means of compliance and coercion.

While watchful Americans shudder at the possibilities suggested by these training exercises, those who have been involved in these ‘humanitarian’ occupation campaigns throughout the convoluted and dragged out Aghanistan war have pointed to its profound failures:

“The use of short-term aid and relief programmes as part of counter-insurgency has been ineffectual, and that, in places
such as Afghanistan, it may even have undermined the overall military goal of defeating insurgents.”

After all, the tactic – as its cries of peace play against a backdrop of a military invasion – are as chilling and empty as the words of a Martian visitor repeating “We come in peace” before attacking a stunned and off guard opponent.

What history does teach us it is good for, however, is dealing with dissidents and stifling opposition.

Many of the conspiracy theorists watching the events so closely have suggested that Jade Helm-type exercises are the perfect pretexts for “red list” operations.

Meanwhile, someone caught footage of a drill in Florida wherein military personnel roundup up citizen role-players and loaded them into vans for rendition:

Photos from an exercise in Connecticut suggest similar urban warfare training with specialized units going house-to-house.

What are they really training for?

Stay vigilant and stay vocal in calling out the unpatriotic use of forces for domestic control.

For a number of years, the topic of FEMA Camps (i.e. American concentration camps) have been rumored to exist. Jesse Ventura, on his show, Conspiracy Theory, revealed to the public the existence of FEMA Camps in such a dramatic fashion that the episode has been banned from public viewing.

Through the years, there has been much speculation about the existence of FEMA Camps and their true purpose. Recent events surrounding the recent Ebola crisis, is making it clear that the camps, as well as other co-opted public facilities (e.g. stadiums, malls, etc.) will be used to enforce medical martial law for both the sick as well as anyone else who the government determines is a (health) risk to the well-being of the public. Am I saying that the camps will be used to house political dissidents. This is undeniably true. This article traces the inception of FEMA camps to the present and intended purpose. This article will also expose the fact that it will not just be Ebola victims going to these camps where there will be medical facilities.

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